Imperial titles
Below the despot stood a short ladder of dignities borrowed wholesale from Constantinople and then bent to Bulgarian use. Some were reserved for the tsar's brothers and sons; one, the sebastos, spread far enough down to appear on the seals of provincial men who were nobody's kin.
Articles
Sebastokrator
The sebastokrator was the holder of a high honorific title adopted in Bulgaria from the Byzantine court hierarchy. Its Bulgarian bearers are attested in the thirteenth century and belonged to the ruling dynasty or its closest circle. The dignity placed its holder near the summit of the hierarchy, but did not in itself make him either a co-ruler or a provincial governor.
Kaisar
Kaisar was a high court dignity of Roman origin, incorporated into the Byzantine hierarchy and probably adopted by the Second Bulgarian Empire. The title occurs in fourteenth-century Bulgarian liturgical texts, but no Bulgarian holder is known by name. Its place in the Bulgarian hierarchy is therefore plausible, though not conclusively established.
Protosebastos
The protosebastos was a high court dignity of Byzantine origin, attested in the Second Bulgarian Empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Bulgarian evidence associates it with only two individuals: the boyar Pribo and the monk Basil, who had served under Tsar Ivan Alexander. The scarce sources indicate high rank but do not show that the title carried a specific administrative office.
Sebastos
Sebastos was an honorific aristocratic dignity of Byzantine origin, attested in Bulgaria from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century to the end of the fourteenth century. Although charters sometimes place sebastoi among royal agents, inscriptions indicate that the title was not tied to a specific office. Particularly important is the case of Ognian, who held the dignity of sebastos while separately serving as a kephale.